C3S :: Ignition Mix marks the start of the Cultural Commons Collecting Society's (C3S) launching phase. By 15th July 2013, C3S kicks off a crowdfunding campaign to give supporters the opportunity to purchase shares and join C3S in becoming an alternative to dusted collecting societies.

Singvøgel's take on C3S:

"It's time for a fair and modern alternative to traditional collecting societies. One that gives artists full control over their work and business and listeners the security to know exactly what they are allowed to do. Based on every single piece, No total-buy-out on the one side, no criminalisation on the other. With a fair distribution of revenues. And with the option to give away single pieces for free and to earn money for others. Because every piece of music is a unique entity and deserves to be treated unique."

C3S want to build a collecting society in collaboration with indie & DIY artists and for these artists. For you. With you. It's for the artist who can't identify with other collecting societies but who wants to make a living from CC-BY-NC licences.

C3S will start in Germany as an upcoming competitor to GEMA. But the foundation is a European one - a Registered European Cooperative. Which means, every User Member (anyone who creates / arranges / remixes / writes music) will have equal voting rights. Plus, in the long term, C3S is going to take the role of one collecting society for every European country.

We think each artist should be entirely free which licence to use: Creative Commons (which we support most), but also "all rights reserved". Yet, we don't want to administer all of your songs. It's your choice. And it's your choice if you want to license one song for free, and another one not.

Other collecting societies don't make use of available technology to calculate the accurate distribution of licence fees. It's easy, and data is around. But they take samples and calculate the distribution of revenues by questionable distributional keys.

Finally, there's the need to integrate with social media. With micro payment. With honoring (like flattr) and even donations. It's important for indie & DIY artists... and for user generated content. Imagine a flattr button in your music player. For upcoming artists, this would a huge improvement.

Here's what artist's have got to say about C3S...

Von Korf:

"We support the C3S because we believe if platforms make money with music they must compensate the artists while non-commercial use should be free and derivative works should be possible."

"we support C3S because its overall concept is a blessing for artistic license and DIY artists."

Marco Trovatello:

"To me, foundation of C3S is long overdue. Stop bashing GEMA, join C3S and support liberation of artists and fair dissemination of cultural goods."

iD.EOLOGY netlabel:

"The freedom that the internet offers bears great opportunities for cultural progress and a continuously vital creative scene that spans the globe. Hence it should be possible for musicians and labels to make use of these opportunities while enjoying a chance for revenue if their music is being used in a commercial frame. This is exactly what C3S makes possible, but what has to this date been denied to by the established German collecting-society GEMA. Their existing monopoly is an obstacle to new means of artist promotion, fanbase building and music distribution facilitated by the internet. Hence this monopoly has to fall, and C3S to us seems like the most promising and well-conceived model so far in order to achieve this aim."

Ingvo Clauder:

"Diversity leads to diversity."

epilog:

"I support C3S, because I think it is really important to have an alternative to GEMA in Germany, to SUISA in Switzerland and in other countries. We need to modernize copyright in the digital age, we need collecting societies that support Creative Commons and we need a collecting society that works transparent, fair and effective. All this is missing at the moment and C3S could be the future."